Dark Moonlighting (2 page)

Finally, I have also written this book out of
a sense of responsibility. As a convicted felon, the profit from
the sale of this book will go to my “victim’s” family. I know her
parents developed a considerable debt to pay for her schooling. I
could not save their only child, but I take a small amount of
pleasure knowing that I can at least relieve their financial
burden. I wonder if they will read my memoirs and believe what I
have to say. If they do, the knowledge that their daughter’s killer
is still on the loose may do more harm than the good I set out to
do by writing this book in the first place. If that is the case
than I must apologize but that consequence is unavoidable.

It is still early evening as I write this,
but darkness arrives quickly during winter in the Midwest. Nathan,
almost certainly attempting to be cruel rather than conserve
energy, has lowered the artificial lights in this wing of the
prison to their lowest level. I have excellent night vision as a
predator, but I find it amusing when the dullard thinks he has
bested me in a battle of wits. As such, I will wrap up this little
introduction as I am sure most of you just skimmed over it
anyway.

Since the start of the 21st century there
have been three women who were very important in my life. One who I
respected, one who loved me and one who I loved. My relationships
with these women were complicated but, thankfully, separate. The
problem with leading a triple life is that there are a lot of ways
to get caught by the people around you. The problem with leading a
triple life as a vampire is conspicuousness. I was three times as
likely to be discovered by those who held a grudge against me. I
admit I had become complacent in my life, and that was one of my
mistakes. They say revenge is a dish best served cold. When you
have been alive as long as I have, that dish can get very cold
indeed.

My troubles all started about a year and a
half ago. Okay, they started 651 years ago if you want to get
technical, but no one wants to read my memoirs if they are as long
as an Ayn Rand novel. So without further ado…

Chapter One: My Frayed Lady

I was one of the most vile, evil creatures to
ever walk the face of the Earth.

“Your Honor, I object.”

Also, I was a vampire.

Judge Ashley Yoest stared down at her table
and dramatically rubbed the bridge of her nose. She was close to
retirement age, and she looked tired and drained by the length of
the trial. She left the courtroom silent for a good thirty seconds
before she looked up, glared at me, closed her eyes and let out a
long sigh.

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” she started
angrily. “On what grounds?”

“The prosecution is leading the witness,” I
responded confidently.

Judge Yoest narrowed her eyes at me as if
trying to telepathically make my head explode. Without turning her
gaze from me she asked, “Court reporter, could you please read back
the prosecutor’s question?”

“Where were you on the night of June 28th?”
the court reporter dutifully quoted.

“I really don’t think that question was
leading, do you?” Judge Yoest asked.

“Your Honor, it really depends—”

“That was a rhetorical question!” she boomed,
her voice echoing through the courtroom. “Objection overruled,” she
said irritably.

The prosecutor, who looked as annoyed as
Judge Yoest, continued his cross-examination of the witness after
shooting me an annoyed look. The questions he asked were mundane to
the point of being almost completely irrelevant to his case. He was
tired of the proceedings, and that was exactly what I needed from
him. I knew his overconfidence would lead him to make a mistake
soon. I just needed to stay focused and wait for my opportunity to
exploit his inevitable error.

As a defense attorney, I spent quite a bit of
time at the McClane County Courthouse. It was the oldest building
in Starside, Illinois, and its 19th century architecture seemed out
of place next to the modern structures in the bustling metropolis.
The interior of the courtroom looked like, well, a courtroom.
Picture the courtroom in
Law & Order
or
Law &
Order: Criminal Intent
or
Law & Order: Special Victims
Unit
or
Law & Order: Trial by Jury
or
Law &
Order: Los Angeles
or
Law & Order: To be Announced
and you will get a pretty accurate representation. Or, for the
European readers, think of it like an Americanized version of the
courtroom from
Law & Order: United Kingdom
. The only
important aspect of the courtroom for my story is the fact that it
had very large windows to the left of the gallery.

I felt the sunlight hit my face before I
heard the distinctive sound of the blinds racing towards the
ceiling. It was like having a beaker of sulfuric acid thrown in my
eyes. I threw my hands over my face, but that only transferred the
pain to my extremities. My fangs extended automatically because of
the sudden threat. I managed to wrap the inside of my arm around my
mouth as I dove under the table in front of me.

“Oh my God,” Judge Yoest said in horror.

By the tone of her voice I was sure she had
seen my fangs. My dark secret had been exposed, and the happy life
I had created was over. I was trapped under the table, cowering
from the sunlight. In my mind I was going over the possible avenues
of escape. The courtroom bailiffs, stunned by my monstrous
transformation, would be slow to react. If I hit them hard and fast
I could make it out of the courtroom and into the parking garage
without threat of serious resistance. Then it would be a simple
matter of driving and never looking back.

“Bailiff, close that blind immediately. How
many times do I have to tell you people to keep those windows
covered?” Judge Yoest continued her thought in an angry tone. “Mr.
Whittier is an albino. There is to be no sunlight in my courtroom
while he is present.”

I cautiously opened my eyes as I heard the
window blind being pulled down. With the pain gradually subsiding
from my head and hands, I rose from beneath the table and examined
Judge Yoest. The apologetic expression on her face relieved the
last of my lingering fear. She had not seen my fangs or witnessed
my transformation. The defendant, who had been nearest to me, only
looked annoyed that my serious medical condition had inconvenienced
him slightly. I glanced around the gallery and found curious or
sympathetic expressions on the few people who had shown up to watch
the trial. An elderly gentleman near the window smiled sheepishly
at me through a beet red face before quickly returning to his seat.
Confident that I had not been exposed, I needlessly dusted myself
off and did my best to play the part of a victim.

“Nick, I owe you an apology. I thought I made
the light situation clear at the start of the trial but evidently
that wasn’t enough. In the future we will rope the area around the
windows off or bind the shades to the ground or something. Are you
all right?” Judge Yoest asked.

“Yes, yes I’m perfectly fine. No need to
apologize, Your Honor. Accidents will happen, and you’ve always
gone above and beyond to accommodate my special needs,” I responded
graciously. I hoped the dismissive wave of my hand that I added
would endear me to the twelve people in the jury box.

The trial continued after everyone involved
recovered from the momentary excitement. The prosecutor lazily
finished cross-examining my witness after about ten more minutes of
inane questions. Judge Yoest thanked the witness for her service
before nodding in my direction. The witness had been the last one
on my list, and Judge Yoest looked eager for me to rest my
case.

“Your Honor,” I said as I rose from my seat.
“In light of Ms. Geyer’s testimony, I would like to recall one of
my witnesses to clarify—”

“Approach the bench, Mr. Whittier,” she
interrupted. She motioned for the prosecutor to join us for the
sidebar.

“Enough,” she said to me flatly after I
reached her. She lowered the volume of her voice to prevent the
members of the jury from hearing the conversation.

“Your Honor,” I began to argue, but fell
silent when she raised her hand.

“Enough,” Judge Yoest repeated. “You’ve
managed to draw out these proceedings by at least two weeks. Your
arguments are barely rational, you call eyewitness who haven’t seen
anything and you introduce evidence that has no pertinence. You
have wasted this court’s time on a case that never even should have
gone to trial.”

“With all due respect Your Honor, it’s hardly
your place to decide what cases should or should not—”

“Your client punched a pregnant woman in the
head on the sidelines of a children’s soccer game,” Judge Yoest
interrupted through clenched teeth. “No less than twenty people
heard them arguing about a call and witnessed him assault the
woman. Camcorder footage from various soccer moms and dads shows
the attack from three different angles. It’s over. You lost. Let it
go. It is now,” she paused briefly as she rolled up the sleeve of
her robe to check her wristwatch. “2:45. I intend to allow a short
recess and then we’ll hear closing arguments. The jury will spend
three, maybe four minutes deliberating before they come back with a
guilty verdict for your client. I can be home, soaking my feet in a
tub of Epsom salt and watching sexually promiscuous kids from New
Jersey by 5:30. I swear to God if the next words I hear come out of
your mouth aren’t ‘the defense rests’ I’m going to find some reason
to hold you in contempt. Do I make myself clear?”

I did not answer immediately as I strained my
mind to come up with some alternative. Eventually I submitted with
a nod of my head and returned to my table.

“Does the defense have anything else to add
to its case?” Judge Yoest asked, making no attempt to hide the
irritation in her voice.

“No, Your Honor,” I answered with a polite
smile. “The defense rests its case.”

Judge Yoest’s prediction proved to be wrong
as it took the jury fifteen minutes to return to the courtroom with
a verdict. To be fair though, I am sure some of that time was spent
on a bathroom break. To the surprise of absolutely no one present,
my client was found guilty. Judge Yoest wrapped up the pomp and
circumstance quickly, and she was halfway to her chambers before
the bailiff called for everyone to rise.

I stuck around only briefly in order to watch
my client be ushered back to his jail cell. A bailiff escorted me
out of the courtroom and down the hallway just in case I ran across
any open windows during my departure. On that day the courthouse
employees had remembered to keep my exit route free of sunshine,
and the bailiff left me once we reached the underground parking
garage.

My ride was an older model sport utility
vehicle I had purchased three years earlier. There was some water
damage to the interior, but the car was in excellent condition
otherwise. I had managed to purchase it for very cheap thanks to my
alternate life as a member of the Starside Police Department. I
considered myself lucky to grab the SUV even before it was put up
for auction. In retrospect I probably would have been the only one
to bid on it anyway. It had been seized by the police after a woman
suffering from severe postpartum depression used it to drown two of
her three children. Normal people tend to be a bit squeamish about
purchasing a car with such an unpleasant history. I was just happy
to save a few bucks.

The money I saved was essential for the
special outfitting I needed to do to the SUV. Tinted windows are
easy to come by, but glass that completely blocks all ultraviolet
radiation is expensive and hard to obtain. I had been quite wealthy
in the past. My career as a stock broker had lasted for the
equivalent of a normal human lifespan. The Great Crash of ’29 wiped
out both my fortune and my love for gambling on the stock market.
Working three careers did provide me with a substantial income, but
I liked to keep most of that money hidden in untraceable offshore
bank accounts. Past experience had taught me that no matter how
perfectly I executed my killings, there were always unforeseen
variables which I could not control. Being exposed meant having to
abandon my life and start over somewhere new. That was always an
expensive process.

I was not worried about being discovered as a
creature of the night on that particular day. The trial had been
long and disappointing, and I just wanted to grab a couple of hours
of sleep at home before I had to start my shift at the hospital. I
swore loudly at the sound of my cell phone as I was pulling out of
the courthouse’s parking garage. The personalized ringtone was “The
Bitch is Back” by Elton John. It had amused me a few months earlier
when I programmed it, but now only served to warn me of a call from
the man who I truly hated the most in the world. The phone
conversation I had with Caleb Hass was brief. In fact, it was not
really a conversation at all as it consisted only of him demanding
I come to the office and then hanging up the phone.

The summons was inconvenient as it forced me
to go in the wrong direction. The investigators were always baffled
about how I could have led three lives in one city, but it was
actually quite easy to keep them separate. The hospital where I
worked and my apartment were on the north side of the city. The
courthouse was in the center and the police department was on the
south side. The law offices of Hass, Furcht & Ruine were also
on the south side of the city, but I was there so rarely that I
never worried about being spotted by one of my police officer
colleagues.

Starside, Illinois itself was plenty large
enough for a vampire, even one living three lives, to stay
inconspicuous. It had been a beautiful little town when I first
passed through it nearly a century earlier. In 2003 a foolish error
during a hunt left me fleeing New York City with four bullets
lodged in my stomach. After operating in such a large city for
decades, I had the desire to try my luck in a small town. I was
disappointed to find that Starside had bloomed into a bustling
metropolis of 2.5 million people during my absence. The national
media had begun buzzing about “The Urinator” serial killer in New
York, and I decided it would be best to settle down and blend into
a population center as quickly as possible. My reluctant choice
proved to be a happy home for years after I made the decision.